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Friendica 2026.01 released


We are very happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica “Blutwurz” 2026.01. In addition to several improvements and new features, this release contains fixes for security problems that Hrizi Bilel has notified us about. Thanks for your report! It also contains the first results of a accessibility review by Casey Kreer.

Some highlight of Friendica 2026.01 are

  • we overhauled the embedding of media from various sources and improved several aspects,
  • users can now sort widgets and channels,
  • the performance of system and user defined channels has improved,
  • admins can now export and import contact block lists and block access for non-logged in visitors to media included in posting.

If you have developed your own addons for Friendica note that we reworked our hook system and introduced a new AddonHelper class.

For details, please the CHANGELOG file in the repository.

What is Friendica


Friendica is a decentralised communications platform, you can use to host your own social media server that integrates with independent social networking platforms (like the Fediverse or Diaspora*) but also some commercial ones like Tumblr and BlueSky.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions


If you are updating from an older version than the 2024.12 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version .

Pre-Update Procedures


Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently.

Using Git


Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2026.01 release would be
cd friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar run install:prod
cd addon
git pull
If you want to use a different branch than the stable one, you need to fetch and checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files


If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2026.01.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2026.01.tar.gz (sha256)) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2026.01 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks


The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script
bin/console dbstructure update
from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database this update might run for days.

If you are using the daemon for your background worker, note that we have moved the functionality into the console. Adopt your setup to use the new bin/console daemon command.

Known Issues


At the time of writing this, none with 2026.01

How to Contribute


If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible, and especially to all the new contributors to Friendica, and have fun!


friendi.ca/2026/01/27/friendic…


Friendica 2024.12 released


We are very happy to announce the availability of the new stable release of Friendica “Interrupted Fern” 2024.12. In addition to several improvements and new features, this release contains the fix for the broken installation wizard.

The highlights of Friendica 2024.12 are

  • added exporter for prometheus,
  • we dropped the support of OStatus (the predecessor of ActivityPub) after evaluating the amount of active servers/contacts that are still only using this protocol, and deprecated the fancybox addon
  • Friendica is now REUSE compliant and supports FEP-67ff

For details, please see the CHANGELOG file in the repository.

What is Friendica


Friendica is a decentralised communications platform, you can use to host your own social media server that integrates with independent social networking platforms (like the Fediverse or Diaspora*) but also some commercial ones like Tumblr and BlueSky.

How to Update

Updating from old Friendica versions


If you are updating from an older version than the 2023.12 release, please first update your Friendica instance to that version as it contained some breaking changes.

Pre-Update Procedures


Ensure that the last backup of your Friendica installation was done recently.

Using Git


Updating from the git repositories should only involve a pull from the Friendica core repository and addons repository, regardless of the branch (stable or develop) you are using. Remember to update the dependencies with composer as well. So, assuming that you are on the stable branch, the commands to update your installation to the 2024.12 release would be
cd friendicagit pullbin/composer.phar install --no-devcd addongit pull
If you want to use a different branch than the stable one, you need to fetch and checkout the branch before your perform the git pull.

Pulling in the dependencies with composer will show some deprecation warning, we will be working on that in the upcoming release.

Using the Archive Files


If you had downloaded the source files in an archive file (tar.gz) please download the current version of the archive from friendica-full-2024.12.tar.gz (sha256) and friendica-addons 2024.12.tar.gz (sha256)) and unpack it on your local computer.

As many files got deleted or moved around, please upload the unpacked files to a new directory on your server (say friendica_new) and copy over your existing configuration (config/local.config.php and config/addon.config.php) and .htaccess files. Afterwards rename your current Friendica directory (e.g. friendica) to friendica_old and friendica_new to friendica.

The files of the dependencies are included in the archive (make sure you are using the friendica-full-2024.12 archive), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Post Update Tasks


The database update should be applied automatically, but sometimes it gets stuck. If you encounter this, please initiate the DB update manually from the command line by running the script
bin/console dbstructure update
from the base of your Friendica installation. If the output contains any error message, please let us know using the channels mentioned below.

Please note, that some of the changes to the database structure will take some time to be applied, depending on the size of your Friendica database this update might run for days.

Known Issues


At the time of writing this, none with 2024.12

But the development branch is currently rather unstable and should be used with caution as the development diverged far (for Friendica terms) from the now stable branch. We will let our very valued ALPHA testers know when the dev team things that the development branch is stable enough again.

How to Contribute


If you want to contribute to the project, you don’t need to have coding experience. There are a number of tasks listed in the issue tracker with the label “Junior Jobs” we think are good for new contributors. But you are by no means limited to these – if you find a solution to a problem (even a new one) please make a pull request at github or let us know in the development forum.

Contribution to Friendica is also not limited to coding. Any contribution to the documentation, the translation or advertisement materials is welcome or reporting a problem. You don’t need to deal with Git(Hub) or Transifex if you don’t like to. Just get in touch with us and we will get the materials to the appropriate places.

Thanks everyone who helped making this release possible, and especially to all the new contributors to Friendica, and have fun!


in reply to Friendica News

@Friendica News
Many thanks to everyone involved for their truly outstanding work. 🤗👍🥳

cracrayol reshared this.

in reply to Friendica News

Good News thanks! Just updated this morning to the latest RC ;) Will do an upgrade instantly :rocket:
in reply to Friendica News

@Friendica News
“Blutwurz”
allein der Name ist eine Freude ;-)

Danke für Eure Arbeit, dann gibts bei mir wohl jetzt ein Update.

in reply to wolf

@wolf manchmal sind die Namen von Pflanzen im Deutschen einfach netter als im Englischen 😉
@wolf
in reply to Friendica News

I'm going to have to skill myself up a bit more to get this version into #yunohost
in reply to abeorch

@abeorch

Estoy en falta con dar una mano con traduccion al castellano, a ver como esta el tema, una ves puesto los servidores al dia ..

No se si ay alguien en eso.

@Friendica News

in reply to Friendica News

Excellent ! Many thanks.

A couple of questions :

* I assume the docker images are still pending

* Does the new channel cache need to be enabled somehow ?

Cheers

in reply to Peter Lord

Yes @Peter Lord the channel cache needs to be activated in the local.config.php set the channel_cache and potentially also the system_channel_cache in the system block to true. The one is for the system channels, the other for the user defined ones. The impact on the performance differs from node to node and might also be not beneficial. Hence it is not activated by default.
in reply to Tobias

@Peter Lord
Under System:
                'channel_cache'         => true,
                'system_channel_cache'  => true,
in reply to Friendica News

@Friendica News

Does the installer for new instalations work again?
Do we have any tests or experience report with that?

in reply to utopiArte

@Friendica News

changelog wrote:

Fixed the installer expecting the /addon directory
[juliend2]others:
Fixed missing / blurred images (#14800)
[annando] Improved YT preview embedding (#14223 #14621)
[annando] Improved handling of YT URLs
[haheute] Improved image upload (#14680 #14695)
[xundeenergie] Improved the gallery
[haheute] Improved screen reader accessibility [annando, KreerC]
Improved handling of videos if ffmpeg is installed
[annando] Improved display of scheduled postings
[randompenguin1] Improved display of notifications [annando, MrPetovan]
Improved Mastodon compatible API [annando, gudzpoz, HankG, MrPetovan, Quix0r]
Improved federation with Diaspora, Firefish, GoToSocial, Lemmy, Pixelfed, Threads
[annando] Improved display of quoted posts
[annando] Improved BBCode conversion
[annando]Addons
xmppchat
Added new XMPP based webchat addon
[annando]
in reply to Friendica News

Thanks, works like always. Feels a bit faster, as mentioned in Changelog.

I wonder if there is any official PHP Version support mentioned somewhere? I use the Vagrant provision and upgraded to PHP 8.3.

in reply to Tobias

Thanks. Not sure why I didn't check your CI... Will happily update PHP :)
in reply to Friendica News

Excellent news! Now I'll wait for @YunoHost to package it officially, I've been using the git branch for almost a year now
in reply to Carlos Solís

I'm keen to learn more about #yunohost app packaging. I've just got downloaded the #friendica and #Zigbee2mqtt to have a look at.
in reply to Friendica News

Completed updating u3a.social. Took the opportunity to migrate away from containers, so all native now 😀

Have enabled the channel cache as mentioned here.

The workerqueue jumped up with many UpdateContacts and FetchMissingReplies ... cron seems to be keeping up though.

@U3ACommunities Computing